You probably already know all there is to know about it if you are a lover of educational games. It was offered at no cost in the past. Beginning in 2019, it is now a paid service due to Google’s decision to increase the rates of its Maps API. Following the price increase, several developers turned to alternatives to Google Maps, such as OpenStreetMap. However, GeoGuessr has decided to continue using Google’s mapping services. Due to the costly fee, however, many players of GeoGuessr are looking for the best free alternatives. If you consider yourself among them, we have compiled a list of the top 15 geography-based trivia games similar to GeoGuessr that you can play right now.
About Geoguessr and its Popular Player
Geoguessr is a geography-based game, as was stated before, and it will use Google Street View to test the players’ ability to identify their surroundings in different parts of the globe. Players will be given a map to look at. Players have access to a variety of gameplay options during the game. Trevor Rainbolt, often popularly known as Rainbolt, is a player from the United States who competes in GeoGuessr. Rainbolt publishes videos that point out the locations of popular music videos and viral videos. On TikTok, Rainbolt posts his videos and short video content under the alias “Georainbolt.” In addition to that, he uploads videos on YouTube. During the epidemic, Rainbolt began honing his GeoGuessr abilities by watching for four to five hours every day, focusing his attention on recognizable landmarks such as signs and telephone poles, and observing the live streams of other players.
What are the Objectives of Geoguessr?
GeoGuessr can be a valuable tool for teachers in encouraging students to develop an interest in the cultures and countries of other regions and the critical thinking skills necessary to analyze geographical and cultural landscapes. Players are naturally driven to recover their past knowledge about geographical distinctions, ecosystems, their residents, and other topics while they are attempting to solve a problem or surpass a friend’s high score in the game. For instance, players may begin the guess by determining which hemisphere they are looking at. Players are in the Southern hemisphere when the sun is positioned to the south of the camera. They might also base their prediction on hints provided by the environment’s geography, such as the soil, the plants, or the weather. On GeoGuessr, players also have the option to create their maps. This allows students to develop their foundational understanding of geography and get familiar with new locations. In addition, teachers might encourage students to create maps that have some kind of personal significance to them. While playing this game, students will acquire valuable transferable skills such as visual analysis, locating and interpreting evidence, and research skills.
How to do Well in GeoGuessr?
You can perform well with the below-mentioned tips and tricks of GeoGuessr.
Eliminate Countries
The first thing you need to do is determine which nations do not have Google Street View coverage. Because GeoGuessr uses Google Street View, having a fundamental understanding of which Google Street View does not cover countries and locations will enable you to apply a process of elimination to enhance your abilities. If you are playing a typical game, the majority of the time, you will end up in enormous nations such as the United States of America, Russia, or Australia. Countries on a smaller scale have a lower probability of emerging.
Learn to locate places using shadows
Examine the shadows around you to determine which region of the world you are now in. This is a clever move. Check the compass on your GeoGuessr screen to determine the direction corresponding to the north (the red point will point north). Examine where your shadows are falling and act accordingly. If the point of the shadow is facing north, then the sun is shining from the south, which indicates that you are most likely located in the Northern Hemisphere.
Use Scripts and languages
The scripts and languages you encounter may be some of the most telling indicators of your location in the world. For instance, you may deduce that you are now in Russia if you see that people are using the Cyrillic script. Numerous languages, such as Bulgarian, Kazakh, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Belarusian, and dozens of others, also utilize the Cyrillic alphabet to write their alphabets.
Take a look at Cars
Get accustomed to the idea that traffic will appear different in each country you visit. You may safely conclude that you are not in the United States of America if you see a preponderance of motorbikes or scooters. If just a few scooters are scattered about, you might be in a European nation. If you are in East or Southeast Asia, the likelihood is that a large number of scooters surround you. On the other hand, if you see a preponderance of motorbikes with smaller engine displacements (in the range of 100 to 150 cc), you could be in South America.
Guessing a Location From an Image
This method is a bit similar to GeoGuessr but with a bit of a twist. Here, you will have to guess the location of the place by looking at the image. There are several free geoguessr alternatives that fulfill this purpose.
City Guesser
City Guesser is a website that allows users to explore videos shot while strolling, driving, or flying over sites all over the globe. It is a geography-based browser game that aims to give players a unique traveling and guessing experience worldwide. It first went up on August 13, 2020, and has been attracting hundreds of geography buffs daily since then. City Guesser’s urban environments and moving clips provide you with a great deal more information to work with compared to GeoGuessr, which would often place you on a rural road with nothing but the surrounding vegetation and the weather to guide you.
Get Lost
Get Lost is a game of geographical exploration using procedurally generated street maps. If you want to play this game, in contrast to the other alternatives, you must register an account first. This game is not an open-and-play game. Analyze the photographs of the street corners for any hints that can help you pinpoint your position. To make an educated estimate, click the map wherever you believe it to be. There will be five rounds in total. Your score in the game is determined by how close your prediction is to the actual location shown in the street view. The technique for determining scores is relatively straightforward, and the maximum possible point total for each round is currently set at 5,000.
Geostatic
In a nutshell, Geostatic is an online geography quiz game that is free to play and has a wide variety of gameplay options. You may play Geotastic by yourself or with other people online. You can personalize your experience to your preferences because of the many customization choices available about the different game types. In addition to that, there are additional high-score hunts, challenges, and seasonal ranked modes to participate in. Additionally, on the weekend that falls on the final day of the month, they host a live community event on Twitch. The precise day and hour will be made public in advance, and it will be possible to locate it on the homepage, in the event viewer, on social media, or even on the official Discord server.
Hide and Seek
Hide and Seek World (HaSW) has a more entertaining user experience than others since it puts you against other online players in a competition to come as near the Street View picture as possible. You can either make your own game for you and your friends to participate in or join a public game already being played on Find Wolly. Wolly is the artificial intelligence mascot of HaSW. Be aware, however, that the free edition only allows you to participate in two public games per day, but there are no such limits on private games.
GuessWhere Challenge
The GuessWhere Challenge is an incredible (geo challenge) quiz game that involves guessing random places. It will transport you to an unknown location anywhere in the globe. The game will show you a panoramic view, and then you will have to locate it on a map. The closer you get to the actual answer with your guess, the more points you will get. Take part in five rounds spread over five distinct venues. Can you complete the geo quest, rise to the top of the high score list, and get all the achievements? Exercise your geographical knowledge, go on a virtual journey, get familiar with new locations, and take on various exciting geo challenges!
Where am I
Where Am I is another game where you have to guess where you are. You will start the game in a completely random place anywhere in the globe, and it is a relatively simple game overall. Here, you only have a Google Street View snapshot at your disposal, which you may alter to determine where you are. You may expand the global map by hovering the mouse pointer in the inset. Later on, you can click on the map area that corresponds to where you think you took the panoramic picture. The application will promptly inform you of the degree to which your assumption deviates from the actual setting of the photo. Open the URL on the desktop version of your browser to test it out for yourself. You may also use mobile browsers to play the game. However, the bigger screen is ideal for locating the place.
World Geography Games
World Geography Games offers a variety of fun and informative quizzes that children may play. Students, adults, and even elderly citizens can play them to test and enhance their geographical knowledge. Their online quizzes will put your cognitive abilities to the test by asking questions on a wide variety of countries throughout the globe. You will discover all the information you need in one location. Whether it would be studying for an exam, seeking a free resource on an interactive whiteboard, or searching for your next vacation spot. This website offers a variety of free educational tools that might be helpful for instructors in elementary school, secondary school, homeschooling, homework assistance, and tutoring situations.
Sheppard Software
You will develop a mental map of the continents, nations, cities, and sceneries of the globe if you play the geography games developed by Sheppard Software. This website covers quizzes on a variety of countries and continents from around the world. It includes Europe, Africa, the United States of America, the various US regions, the capital cities of Africa, Mexico, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Central and South America, and many other countries and continents. Games are often structured into levels, and to advance to subsequent levels, you must first complete the currently active level.
Seterra
Using the Seterra app, you may acquire geographical knowledge while having fun. There are multiple-choice questions covering the geographies of every nation and continent globally. Using this platform, you will learn about many topics, like national capitals, cities, rivers, and lakes. In addition to various quizzes, Seterra offers some geography printables in the form of PDF maps of different nations and towns. Seterra provides access to a greater variety of game modes than does GeoGuessr. Seterra offers a total of nine different game modes. It includes learning, shows all, multiple, choice, pin, pins hard, type, type simple, and type with auto-complete. Because of this, Seterra is an improved alternative to GeoGuessr.
playGeography
There are several intriguing maps of the world’s geography included in playGeography. TeachMe is the company that owns the platform. TeachMe is a unique platform offering educational games and applications with millions of users. playGeography offers up to 92 different geographical maps and more than 12,000 different questions. On playGeography, which is quite similar to GeoGuessr, you may choose from one of five different game styles to play. However, the game types available on each platform are somewhat distinct. You can customize the level of challenge associated with each game mode. Not to mention that each game has a time limit, and the bigger your point total will be, the quicker you can respond to each question.
Ducksters
Ducksters is a trivia and quiz game centered on geography. It includes several places all over the globe, including all of the continents, capitals, and national flags, among other things. It also covers all of the states in the United States, complete with maps, capitals, and flags for each state. This website offers a variety of activities, including word searches, word searches with maps, crossword puzzles, and more. You can play the puzzles online in active mode or download a printed version that you may use in schools or at parties for youngsters. There are also geography word searches included in Ducksters. It challenges players to locate all geographical phrases for a particular place concealed inside the word search grid. There is a game version that you can play online. In it, you may compare your results to those of other players.
GeoPuzzle
While playing GeoPuzzle, you may have fun while simultaneously learning the names of countries and states, as well as the locations of those countries and states. After registering, you will have access to more than 100,000 different areas from which you may choose to do your puzzles. To start the game, choose a region from the map or the list and examine its flag, coat of arms, and perhaps even more information to help you study geography.
World Map Quiz
The World Map Quiz is available for download on Android and Windows systems and has been adapted into 16 different languages. Downloading this application should not be delayed in the least if you are interested in an excellent educational resource or just want to be able to glance at a map and know exactly where things are located. Various game modes may assist you in learning the locations of nations as well as the flags and capitals of those countries. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also a mode where you can play with cities and oceans. Available modes in World Map Quiz are Country name, Elimination, Capital mode, Flag mode, Guess the name, City name, and Oceans and seas.
Map Box
Map Box is an essential geo-guessing website built by the collaboration of Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, and Svelte. When you open this site, you will see a simple UI with one button where ‘Let’s get started is written. When you click on that, they will present one map on the right side, giving you four options. So it’s a simple MCQ quiz of geo-maps. After selecting, it will show whether it is correct or not. The differentiator for this website is its information about that country after the results.
Zoomtastic
Zoomtastic is a simple alternative to GeoGuessr that is incredibly informative. Registration or the creation of an account are not prerequisites for using it. You are presented with a picture of a nation at random. Then you have only thirty seconds to determine the country’s name. In contrast to GeoGuessr, which includes around four distinct game types, Zoomtastic only offers a single gameplay option. The map will progressively zoom out as the timer counts down, providing more clues to help you. In the last twenty seconds of the test, you can choose the right option from the given four options. You are free to play without any time restrictions. If you have a high score, you will be considered one of the greatest players in the game. Additionally, it will include your name in the list of the top 100 players on the website.
Bottom Line
All the games we just mentioned are comparable to GeoGuessr, albeit some are smoother than others. However, they all test your knowledge of international geography. This is the one thing they all have in common with these apps. Therefore, go ahead and give these best free alternatives to GeoGuessr a go. Next, you can read about the Best Google Maps Alternatives.